It’s been far overdue, but I’ve finally rolled up my sleeves and merged the portfolio website and the blo, and moved the blog to the main domain.

In actuality, what I did was add a cartoon logo portfolio section to the blog, and created new info pages, migrating all that content from the old portfolio site to the blog. Then I moved the web address of the blog from the old subdirectory location (blog.coghillcartooing.com) to the main directory (coghillcartooning.com), deleting the old portfolio site in the process (and of course redirecting the old pages to the equivalents on this new site).

Thank You, WordPress Portfolio

When I first set up the blog (first post: way back in 2005!), the intention was always to eventually move the portfolio over and make it all WordPress-based. But at the time, and for many years afterwards, there just wasn’t an ideal way to set up a functional portfolio without a lot of custom coding (which was over my head) and a lot of tweaking of the WordPress theme files. Not to mention a massive dependence on third-party plugins.

But WordPress has come a long way, and the built-in support for portfolios as well as this cool portfolio theme I am using have made it pretty much perfect for setting this up the way I’d always intended.

The old WordPress theme I was using for the blog was seriously out of date and no longer being developed or supported.

And the main portfolio site was a hand-coded website which was not only very difficult to maintain and update, but it was not mobile-friendly in the least. It was likely not up to any sort of web standards either. Kind of like living in a shack in your backyard that the building inpsector hasn’t been made aware of yet.

Search Engine Blues

All of this stuff conspired to make both my portfolio and blog very unappealing to Google, and my search result placement for each took a massive nosedive back in 2012. After educating myself on Google algorithm updates, these nosedives took place right around these periods, and my site was the right sort of candidate for the changes they were targeting.

My focus over the past few years has been more and more on my Monsterologist brand, so the portfolio and blog took a back seat. But after some serious search result research for the Monsterologist online store, I realize I needed to put some attention back to the portfolio and blog sites if I was going to keep them online (which I was).

It was something that for years I knew needed to be done, but was always just putting it off. The only other option was to delete the site, and that was not something I had any intention of doing.

WordPress Plugins To The Rescue

I was pleasantly surprised to find the Portfolio feature to be the perfect implementation of what I’d wanted to do with the site all along. I was also glad to find an ideal theme very quickly (I’d been lazily looking for years for something minimalist that focused on the content, not the theme design).

Moving the WordPress installation from the subdomain to the main domain was super easy, with the help of the Duplicator plugin. It essentially did all the work, and I’ve not encountered any issues yet.

The Redirection plugin was also a massive help, as my custom htaccess redirects were for some reason not working (I later confirmed my suspicion that redirects needed to be placed above the WordPress htaccess code). The plugin continues to be a trusty companion as I keep checking to find new overlooked pages and posts.

Cleaning Out The Code Basement

Not only were the WordPress theme and the old hand-coded portfolio site out of date, but I found all sorts of overlooked optimization-killers as I’ve been digging around in the “basement” of my web host directories.

Old htaccess and robots.txt redirects and disallows that I was no longer sure what they were added for in the first place, stagnant and outdated sitemap files that were probably not doing my search result placements any favors.

One thing I fixed here on this site that was also a major bottleneck on the Monsterologist website was the tsunami of tag pages swamping my indexed pages in the Google search index. I learned how to noindex these in one fell swoop, code-wise. To do this on WordPress, I used the Yoast SEO plugin which has been installed for years.

A Fresh Start

I’m pretty pleased with the new site. It looks so much better. It inspired me to spruce up a lot of the content here, as well as re-think my menus and sidebars. I think everything is much more organized and easier to navigate. I’m actually proud of this new site. It’s a far cry from the shame I felt from the old sites, having those dilapidated presentations with my art and name on them.

Regardless of the benefit in the search engine rankings, the psychological benefits from doing this have been alone worth the effort.

I’m also really happy with this theme and the way it showcases the artwork. It really breathes a lot of life back into it all for me.

It also feels great to have a portfolio website that can be updated much, much more easily, and is built with modern code and in an attractive design. I repeatedly put off updating the old portfolio due to the tediousness of the undertaking. It’s so much easier now with everything built upon WordPress, and the addition of the Portfolio feature.

So, same content but a brand-new look, feel and functionality. And with my new-found enthusiasm for this site, who knows — maybe there will finally be new content to pair up with this new paint job.